A Hero of Mine
When I was asked to think of a hero, I immediately started thinking about someone famous past or present who was heroic. I soon found it difficult to think of anyone. Most of the people I thought of had just done something unique, not heroic. I started thinking simpler, to everyday heroes. That’s when I thought of my sister Melinda. Melinda is a twenty-five year old nurse at Hershey Medical Center. My sister is a hero because she helps save lives on a daily basis. Literally every time I talk to her she has some kind of gruesome story of how someone came in on their death bed, for whatever reason, and how they somehow saved them. It’s amazing how she can see that every day and still come home with a smile on her face. It’s also so amazing how much she loves what she does. But her road to where she is today was not a smooth one. She had to face many obstacles in her journey to become the person she always wanted to be.
Ever since she was little, Melinda always was a motherly figure and always dreamed of being a nurse. She would perform pretend surgeries on my Dad all the time, pretending to fix all the wounds and nurse him back to health. Melinda went through school at the top of her class with ease and was accepted into the University of Pittsburgh for nursing. Her first year went by and she did pretty well. But during her sophomore year she decided to leave Pitt and move to Rhode Island with her boyfriend. After two years her relationship with that guy dissolved and she had to move back to Pennsylvania. By the time she got back on her feet she ended up missing over a year and a half of college. She then went on to enroll at a local community college and continued to study nursing. For the next two years Melinda went to school full time and worked at a nursing home full time as well. She worked relentlessly on homework and studied endlessly for tests. All her hard work paid off when she graduated in 2007 and received her nursing certificate. She now gets to help save people’s lives on a daily basis just like she had always dreamed of.
People like my sister, heroes, often go unseen and unrecognized but often deserve the most credit and most praise. My sister never has a set schedule; she works nights, weekends, holidays, anytime they schedule her she has to be there. She is never allowed to call off, unless she is dying and then they’d take her there anyway. Melinda faces trauma cases everyday and has to posses the calmness to help “fix the problem” that lays before her. She is a hero in every sense of the word. Putting others before herself is second nature. The ability to be decisive in the most crucial moment is her strength. My sister Melinda is a hero.
